In this work, we develop L25GC+. L25GC+ is a re-architected 5G Core (5GC) network, aimed at reducing latency and improving user experience. L25GC+ focuses on minimizing the impact of control plane operations on the data plane, while also enhancing data plane processing. It achieves this by exploiting shared memory (based on OpenNetVM), eliminating message serialization and HTTP processing overheads in 3GPP SBI, and using scalable packet classifiers for forwarding-rule lookups. L25GC+ re-designs OpenNetVM's shared-memory-based networking stack to support synchronous I/O between control plane functions, which allows it to distinguish different user sessions and maintains strict 3GPP compliance. L25GC+ also offers seamless integration with existing 5GC microservice implementations through equivalent SBI APIs, reducing code refactoring and porting efforts. Additionally, L25GC+ implements paging and an intelligent handover scheme to reduce delays and data loss. It also offers integrated failure resiliency for faster recovery from failures compared to standard 3GPP procedures.

L25GC+ is built on the open-source kernel-based 5GC implementation called free5GC. By leveraging shared memory I/O, L25GC+ optimizes the 5G control plane, enhancing latency, scalability, and overall user experience. L25GC+ achieves 2X lower data plane latency for paging and handover events compared to free5GC. We demonstrate the improved performance of L25GC+ on a 5G testbed with commercial basestations and UEs.

For more design details, please refer to:

• SIGCOMM 2022: L25GC: A Low Latency 5G Core Network based on High-Performance NFV Platforms
• CloudNet 2023: L25GC+: An Improved, 3GPP-compliant 5G Core for Low-latency Control Plane Operations

To reproduce the experiment in our paper, please refer to artifact documentation.

@inproceedings{l25gc-sigcomm22,
author = {Jain, Vivek and Chu, Hao-Tse and Qi, Shixiong and Lee, Chia-An and Chang, Hung-Cheng and Hsieh, Cheng-Ying and Ramakrishnan, K. K. and Chen, Jyh-Cheng},
title = {L25GC: A Low Latency 5G Core Network Based on High-Performance NFV Platforms},
year = {2022},
isbn = {9781450394208},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3544216.3544267},
doi = {10.1145/3544216.3544267},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference},
pages = {143–157},
numpages = {15},
keywords = {cellular core, NFV, low latency 5G core, 5G cellular networks},
location = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
series = {SIGCOMM '22}
}

clone L25GC+

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/nycu-ucr/L25GC-plus.git

install

cd ~/L25GC-plus
./install.sh

sudo apt install libnuma-dev
git clone https://github.com/nycu-ucr/onvm.git
cd onvm
git checkout opensource
source ./build_testbed.sh

cd onvm-upf/scripts
./install.sh

press Y/N to bind DPDK NICs, you need at least 2 NICs to run L25GC+

sudo apt install docker.io
sudo docker pull linpoyi/l25gc-plus_v0
sudo docker run -it --privileged --name test_v1 linpoyi/l25gc-plus_v0

su linpoyi #password: wirelab020
cd ~/onvm/onvm-upf/dpdk/usertools
./dpdk-setup.sh
49 #setup huge pages
1024 #number of huge pages
62 # exit script

sudo docker pull mongo
sudo docker run --name db mongo

docker network inspect bridge

find the ipv4 address of container "db"

vim ~/L25GC-plus/config/nrfcfg.yaml

change "MongoDBUrl" from 127.0.0.1 to the ip address of db container

run onvm manager

cd ~/onvm
./run_manager.sh

run upf-u (in new terminal)

cd ~/onvm/onvm-upf/5gc/upf_u_complete
sudo ./go.sh 1

run upf-c (in new terminal)

cd ~/onvm/onvm-upf/5gc/upf_c_complete
sudo ./go.sh 2

run NFs (in new terminal)

cd ~/L25GC-plus
./run.sh

run Test (in new terminal)

cd ~/L25GC-plus
./select_test.sh

1) TestRegistration                 4) TestN2Handover
2) TestMultiRegistrationConcurrent  5) TestMultiN2HandoverConcurrent
3) TestMultiPagingConcurrent        6) Quit

stop L25GC+

cd ~/onvm
./force_kill.sh

• You could setup the experiment environment by running the provided scrips.
• For more information about config file settings, please refer to this link.

1. Adjust the parameters in scripts/set_nw_env.sh
   • Reference architecture
2. Run the setup script in scripts with target environment

   ./setup.sh <ue|cn|dn>
   

3. Follow the Running and Testing to run the L25GC+.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us ([email protected]) or join our Google group.

L25GC+ is now under Apache 2.0 license.